“I bet he is,” she said with a smile. “Okay, that’ll be $1,976.25.”
“The fuck you talking about!” I shouted at her.
She recoiled as if I’d slapped her. Everyone in the store stared at me.
“Sorry,” I said quickly. “I was just startled. I thought you said that bike was over nineteen hundred dollars.”
She nodded slowly. “It is?”
“For a bike? I didn’t put that much down when I bought my car!”
“It’s a 2012 Diamondback Podium 3 road bike,” she said as if that explained everything.
“I bought a Prius,” I said as if that made everything better.
“These things can be expensive.”
“Is it made of blood diamonds?” I asked incredulously. “Did children forced to work in deep, dark mines dig up the diamonds with their bare, bleeding hands?”
“Paul’s very… particular… when it comes to money,” Sandy said.
“That makes me sound cheap,” I growled at him.
He shrugged. “You just screamed at this woman about the price of a bike. You sort of are.”
“I am not. I just want to know why a bicycle has any right to cost this much. You know, I bet those poor blood-diamond children have never even seen a bicycle before, and here we are exploiting them just so we can ride in luxury!”
“You’re not doing any riding,” Sandy reminded me. “Well, not of the bicycle variety.” He winked at Jenny. “Paul prefers the reverse cowgirl position.”
Jenny smirked. “I sure hope Vince knows this about him. I think that’ll make his day.”
“I wouldn’t be sad if either of you were kidnapped by Serbian nationalists,” I said, grinding my teeth.
“Are you going to buy this bike or not?” Sandy asked. “And if you are, can you please be my sugar daddy too? I like blood diamonds. Lots and lots of blood diamonds. As a matter of fact, I want a tiara made of nothing but.”
“This will probably guarantee you all the reverse cowgirl you want,” Jenny said. “I know if someone bought this for me, I’d let them tear my vagina apart.”
Sandy and I both stared at her, horrified.
She glared at us. “Oh, you two can talk about getting it up the butt, but I can’t talk about my vagina? Men. So typical.”
“We’re gay,” Sandy said. “Paul, give her your credit card so we can leave before she starts using words like clitoris and cervix. What is the service industry coming to?”
“No.”
“Paul.”
“No.”
“Paul.”
Before I could respond by running out of the shop, Sandy moved quickly and snatched my wallet out of my back pocket like he was some Cockney thief out of a Dickens novel. I made a grab for him but ended up almost plowing into an innocent bystander who was checking out the pretty bike with the streamers and basket. Before I could recover and apologize profusely, Jenny already had my credit card in her hand and had run it through the machine. She handed the card back to Sandy, who put it back in the wallet and then handed it back to me. I grabbed it out of his hands and held it to my chest. “My precious,” I snarled at the both of them.
“And I just need you to sign right here,” Jenny said.
“You can go fuck yourself.”
Sandy stepped forward and forged my signature. “That’s a federal crime,” I told him. “Punishable by three to five years in a minimum-security prison. You’ll get passed around like condiments at a barbeque.”